I did really well at the market yesterday. In fact I made Christmas market kinda money. I had a bunch of last minute sales that put me over the hump.
We hung out by some friends after who are also vendors. They told me that I’m the only one who’s really doing well these days. I think I’ve just honed in on exactly who my client is. And I’m designing for her. And she’s loving my stuff.
Man it feels nice to make money for a change. I’m not going on vacation broke and I can actually contribute something. That feels good. I’ve got four more markets to go. Let’s hope they’re all this prosperous.
Performative white guilt does nothing but make white people feel better for saying sorry instead of confronting themselves or their own actions honestly. you can keep that bullshit to yourselves, you wanna make a difference confront and have real conversations with the people that you live with, work with, lie down with, congregate with, and interact with instead of giving hollow platitudes to folks of color, we don’t need that shit
And if you wanna take it further this shit is self serving racism at its finest, you don’t wanna do the work of actually fostering direct change so badly that you would rather pat yourselves on the back for an apology no one needs nor asked for,this shit isn’t about y’all its about interpersonal, structural, and institutional inequality an apology couldn’t even begin to cover the ramifications of those issues. Do the fucking work.
I hope y’all realise that a bunch of us countries that you call third world nations have already had female presidents and prime ministers without issue.
“This is my first cabbage! You know, a lot of times they’re kind of soft, but this one is solid! It’s going to be good eatin’!“ “What are you going to make with it?” “Well, this one I’m giving to my parents. You have to give the first one away or you just spoil the whole spirit of gardening.”
Nessie I’d be that bitch and knock on everyone’s door to find out who’s car it was and get them to move it immediately with a smile of course. And I’d keep being that bitch until they figure it out hey not OK. The other thing is if you know someone who works at a tire shop asked to get their special screwdriver. It takes the air out of the car from the stem in the tire and they can’t fix it unless they have a special little tool and the piece that you took with it. Expensive booboo
oh I knew whose car it was. It was my downstairs neighbour’s… well what do I call her? The mother of their granddaughter. I had Chris tell them to move the car while I waited in the driveway because I cannot hide my feelings and I was very pissed. We have three apartments here. We’re on the top floor and there’s two on the bottom. The people in the back apartment would never do that. It’s ALWAYS the people in the front. Motherfuckers.
I got home today to find a car parked in my space.
My downstairs neighbours had guests and they apparently felt it was ok for them to use my spot.
I saw said neighbour this morning and if he had bothered to ask me if he could use the space, I would have told him I’d be getting my car back today. But he didn’t ask.
There were two guest cars in the yard. There was another space that was vacant that they could have used. But they chose mine.
It’s funny how they respect everyone else’s spaces here but mine.
One of these days I am just going to key somebody’s fucking car and claim innocence.
need to follow more spoonies! reblog if you have EDS, scoliosis, POTS, MCAD or raynauds syndrome💫
I cried because I want my daughters to feel that blazing pride, that affirmation of their boundless capacity — not from their husbands, but from their world, from the atmosphere, from inviolable wells of certainty inside themselves. I cried because it’s not fair, and I’m so tired, and every woman I know is so tired. I cried because I don’t even know what it feels like to be taken seriously — not fully, not in that whole, unequivocal, confident way that’s native to handshakes between men. I cried because it does things to you to always come second.
I’m trying. Maybe if I didn’t have family through Unfriendly that probably see things in the same way, I wouldn’t. IDK. I know I’ll likely have to eventually close off relationships and distance myself from people who do not understand why I’m hurting and have reason to be cautious and why people are protesting. But right now if I don’t attempt to engage in discourse and educate when I can, I’m going to become someone I can’t face in the mirror.
I get that. My way of dealing with certain types of people is just to cut them off. I’m also out of patience. I’m fed up and angry
I expressed my sadness and disappointment to someone via reply who posted a pic of the protests with the caption of “This is what happens when you give children a trophy for losing” No reply back. No attempt at any kind of discourse. No unfollowing yet.
That’s why I didn’t even try. Why bother? If you think that way I’m done. No discourse. I don’t have the space in my heart to try.
I heard the same thing from a man I’ve been involved with off and on. White, 51 yr old man. Has no clue. Yet one more reason we aren’t going to be able to be involved anymore.
I unfriended someone on Facebook today because his opinion was that people who were protesting Trump were a bunch of whiny losers.
I mean if you’re that simple minded that you can’t understand what those protests are about then I really have nothing to say to you. I cannot find a place to begin a discourse with someone who is so far removed from other people’s pain and distress.
Today was one of those days where I was feeling really domestic, where I put away a ton of laundry, made some labour intensive dumplings and baked and frosted a cake.
And I’ve spent the last three hours lying on a heating pad. I’m sure if my back could speak it would be cussing me right now.
My pork dumplings came out fantastic. Chris said they were better than any you would find at a restaurant and he is not one to flatter me if I don’t deserve it.
I also made the chocolate cake. I haven’t tasted it yet but it’s the same recipe as last time.
We finally got someone to look at my car (it stayed parked up by the pharmacy overnight) and it turns out it’s the starter. I’m grateful that it’s not something worse. It should be relatively easy to fix or replace it. Yay!
I find myself thinking a lot of fucked up shit about white people lately and I don’t wanna offend anybody so I’m trying to keep it to myself. It’s not new shit. Its just been churning around inside of me for a long time. It’s complicated of course so I’m trying to sort out what’s going on inside my head. But like, a lot of it amounts to the fact that the deep distrust I have had of white people as a whole was apparently not unfounded.
Round druzy pendants! Just in time for this Sunday’s UpMarket. Now about to put these beauties on chains. #pendant #jewelry #buylocal #druzy #trinidad #caribbean
I think I’m gonna make pancakes again for breakfast.
On Sunday we passed by Chris’s grandmother. She’d been having chest pains but he had taken her to the doctor to get her heart checked and everything checked out ok.
Yesterday his mom called and said they had taken her to the emergency room. When the doctors examined her, her stomach was ulcerated, the lining raw. While she was there she had a heart attack. They took her into emergency surgery and put a cardiac shunt in. He rushed over as soon as he could and stayed until she was out of surgery. So far so good.
I hope she recovers completely. She’s in her late 80′s but very active and has been in pretty good health. We’ll know more later today.
So yeah, pancakes. Cause I need some comfort food.
I am just so damn grateful that my gay, immigrant, non-white brother lives in fucking San Francisco. And my sister and brother in law live not far from there.
I’m also really grateful that my sister was able to move from Louisville, Kentucky. I don’t know what the racial climate would be like there now.
I’m profoundly aware that there are many POC, LGBTQ people, immigrants, Muslims, who live in areas surrounded by the kind of people who voted for Trump. All I can do is summon the love in my heart and project it to them and hope that they are protected and safe. I feel so afraid for what is to come.
fuck using the term ‘alt right.’ that’s their term. that’s the term they want everyone to use. because it does exactly what Siyanda Mohutsiwa said in these tweets; it hides how radical and ugly that movement really is. Call them what they are. neo-fascists.
Republican president
Republican house
Republican Senate
Conservative supreme court
What will this mean for foreign policy?
What is imperialism going to look like in the next coming years?
What will this mean for Black, Indigenous, Latino and poor people in the US and Canada?
I’ve just wanted comfort food all day. I made myself pancakes for breakfast. Right now I’m feeling to make some of those cheese raviolis in my freezer smothered in alfredo sauce. But Chris is bringing home Chinese. I hope. Fetal position sounds good right now too. And more pancakes.
Hard to get permanent residency and citizenship but not too hard to stay on a semi-permanent basis. Just leave the country every few months for a day and come back and it’s fine. I know people who have done that for years.
I love jewel toned gemstones. And I have to admit I really love long earrings too. These are a perfect combination. #handmade #jewelry #earrings #amethyst #citrine #garnet #goldfilled #buylocal #trinidad #caribbean
I’ve been trying to keep busy so that I don’t sit on my laptop incessantly checking the news.
Tonight we’ll be joining a bunch of our friends at our neighbourhood bar and watching the results as they roll in, just as we did for our last elections.
I have a lot more anxiety about these results than I did our last ones.
The whole world is watching America right now, praying that what we know to be good, true, right and fair will prevail over the bigotry, lies, fear and hatred that has marked this unprecedented election.
I feel sick just thinking about it.
I’m glad after tonight it will finally be over. But over might mean the beginning of something new and horrible and it’s a reality I haven’t allowed myself to imagine.
My family are naturalized and natural born Americans. I do not want to spend my days fearing for their safety because they are non-white and immigrants. I do not want them to be forced to come back here.
Just in time for UpMarket this weekend! New druzy moon pendants 🌜. These adorable charms have been so popular that I rush ordered a bunch more. Available in white and champagne. If you have a request for a specific length chain please message me! #pendant #druzy #crescentmoon #white #champagne #gold
Pair of gold filled peridot earrings I spent way too long working on yesterday. #handmade #jewelry #earrings #goldfilled #peridot #buylocal #trinidad #caribbean
So I’m concerned that people don’t realize just how messed up the situation at Standing Rock really is. The United States signed treaties acknowledging and agreeing that there are certain areas of land that were never ceded to them. These areas do not belong to the United States. They belong to a sovereign nation governed by indigenous people. The land that the Dakota Access Pipeline runs through is not part of the US. It is part of the Lakota nation. That means it is essentially a separate country.
Please imagine if the US wanted to build a pipeline from Washington to Alaska and they went through part of Canada to get there. Canadians protested, saying they have no right to be there and they’re destroying their water, and in response the USA sent militarized police to attack, harass, and harass these protesters, then arrested them for trespassing… on their own land.
That is what’s happening. This is an invasion, and the police are interfering on behalf of a foreign oil company.
The other day I was waiting for Chris to buy us some food and I noticed and Indian guy in the line who had his hair braided in an intricate corn row kind of way. And I thought about how nobody in Trinidad has ever called it cultural appropriation when non-Black people braid their hair. Honestly, I think it’s nice when someone borrows something from a different culture. Like how everyone dresses up in formal Indian-wear when we celebrate Eid or Divali.
Someone made an interesting point to me the other day though. He said that while non-Indians embrace Indian-wear, you don’t see a lot of non-Africans embracing African-wear. On Emancipation Day you mostly only see African people wearing African-wear. Other people don’t dress up for that. I’m not sure why. We should.
I’ve seen a lot of people asking why Hillary Clinton’s suits are referred to as ‘pantsuits’ all the time. Like, why not just ‘suits’? The answer is more infuriating than you may realize.
Until very very recently – more recently than most people my age can probably believe (it was a shock to me) – ‘a women’s suit’ meant a suit jacket and a skirt, full stop. As in, guess when female Senators were last required – REQUIRED – to wear skirts on the Senate floor?
Fucking 1993.
NINETEEN NINETY-THREE. I was six years old and female Senators were still required to wear skirts! And it only stopped when two female Senators showed up in pants to protest it.
1993. Women wearing suits with pants was still controversial 23 years ago. And Hillary Clinton has been a woman in public life for almost 40 years.
And she was a woman who wore pants, who at first didn’t wear makeup and didn’t change her last name, and kept her career after her husband entered politics, and got involved in politics herself, and had strong opinions which she freely expressed.
This made her fucking Satan as far as conservatives were concerned, and she’s been Satan to them ever since.
The use of the word ‘pantsuit’ to refer to Clinton’s suits, which she began wearing long before it was broadly socially acceptable, is a leftover dogwhistle from a less tolerant time. The very phrase ‘pantsuit’ basically means, a suit worn by an uppity woman. A suit worn by the type of woman who doesn’t care that skirts are PROPER professional garments for ladies. A suit for goddamn rabble-rousing hippie bitches.
Can’t wait to see what color pantsuit HRC wears when she’s the goddamn president.
i STILL know women who are required to wear a skirt or dress with their suit jackets in their professional jobs. i have personally been on interviews THIS YEAR with companies with skirt suit requirements. hillary’s pantsuits STILL make a statement to the “old boys’ club.” i hope to god she keeps making that statement.
I’m not Jewish, and the Jewish people I’ve spent time around have never said this.
Obviously I picked it up from somewhere but it’s odd. I had to stop myself from saying it out loud the other day for fear that everyone would look at me weird. We don’t exactly have a lot of exposure to Jewish culture here. There’s like five of them.
Maybe I’ve watched too much Billy Crystal. Who knows? *throws up hands in the air*
We had an infestation of a foreign insect about fifteen years ago that affected both the bee population and many of the plants they loved.
Also, according to a beekeeper I spoke to, the beekeeping community in Trinidad is very small and cannot keep up with the demand. She said that it’s an expensive and labour intensive activity also.
Lastly, it’s actually illegal to import foreign honey into Trinidad. I’ve seen it here but it’s generally strictly regulated so by bringing in my own I was breaking the law. I’m not sure if this is to protect the industry here.
For the past two years I’ve been bringing honey back from the States because honey is very expensive in Trinidad.
But I ran out. And the guy was a great salesman and gave me two samples. And oh my god our local honey is so rich and tasty and flavorful it’s incredible. I’ve decided I’ll spend the money from now on, it’s worth it.
At the gym early to avoid the spin class. And aerobics tomorrow. I don’t have to wait for Chris since he’s still too sick. I’ll be outta here in exactly 24:02 minutes.
I’m trying… this pair I’m working on is taking so long.
At one point I decided I was gonna do away with earrings. They’re labour intensive (usually), you always have to make two… I got fed up. But they sell well. Everyone can wear earrings, they always fit, unlike a ring or even a necklace.
A lady was eyeing a necklace at the market this weekend and enquired about matching earrings and I told her they had sold earlier that day.
She then helpfully suggested that I insist that people buy the earrings and necklaces as a set.
Customers come to me with these kinds of suggestions all the time and they’re always completely self serving.
I had a lady once come to me looking for silver jewelry. I don’t make a lot of silver. Why? Because it doesn’t sell. People here like gold. I like silver. But what’s the point of making it if hardly anyone’s buying it.
So of course she had to tell me that I must make more silver jewelry. She was really insistent. Then she leaves and a while later I spot her at a table and realise she’s one of the vendors. Wanna know what she’s selling? Gold jewelry. Hello???????????
Honestly I don’t get a lot of pushy customers. 99% of the people who stop at my table just ooh and ahh and tell me how beautiful they think everything is. But every now and then I get the one… come to think of it they’re always old ladies! Hahahaha I just realised that. They’re the ones that want to tell me how to run my business! Ok I think I can have a little more fun with it now that I see the trend.
soulsistrin 